UK homes internet access loss blamed on Mirai worm cyber attack

More than 100,000 people in the UK have had their internet access cut after a string of service providers were hit by what is believed to be a coordinated cyber-attack, taking the number affected in Europe up to about a million.

TalkTalk, one of Britain’s biggest service providers, the Post Office and the Hull-based KCom were all affected by the malware known as the Mirai worm, which is spread via compromised computers.

A TalkTalk spokesman said in a statement: “Along with other ISPs in the UK and abroad, we are taking steps to review the potential impacts of the Mirai worm.

“A small number of customer routers have been affected, and we have deployed additional network-level controls to further protect our customers.”

The Post Office said 100,000 customers had experienced problems since the attack began on Sunday and KCom put its figure at about 10,000 customers since Saturday. TalkTalk confirmed that it had also been affected but declined to give a precise number of customers involved.

Earlier this week, Germany’s Deutsche Telekom said up to 900,000 of its customers had lost their internet connection as part of the same incident.

The Mirai worm takes control of devices running the Linux operating system and uses them to knock services offline. This attack has targeted certain types of broadband routers, damaging their internet connection.